


Affection

by awkwardeye



Series: Baise-Moi [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Character Study, F/M, POV First Person, unhealthy relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 15:20:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7513285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awkwardeye/pseuds/awkwardeye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look into how Kylo regards love and the person he loves</p>
            </blockquote>





	Affection

**Author's Note:**

> I just really like writing about boring stuff and i wanted to play with Kylo's character a bit

"The rain to the wind said,

“You push and I’ll pelt.”

They so smote the garden bed

That the flowers actually knelt,

And lay lodged – though not dead.

I know how the flowers felt.”

– Lodged, Robert Frost

* * *

 

_Oh, love, know the words I can’t bring myself to say. Know them in these fists, know them in these screams, know them in these bloody teeth between which I catch your lips and pull with the intent to rip them from your face, love._

Love is a waste of time. It doesn’t matter how many times people attempt to tell me otherwise; I’ll say it again and again, just the same, because it’s true that love is a waste of time. If I’m going to waste my time, I refuse to do it dealing with something as trivial as love. I won’t bear this heart for breaking. I won’t open these lungs for drowning. And, yet, here I am struggling to breathe as if I’ve never drawn a breath before this day.

Damn this heart for its incessant thumping. I’ll tear it from my own chest and beg her to have it. I won’t! Damn these hands for their flagrant quaking. I’ll let her guide them along the curves of her body. I won’t! Damn these eyes for catching her passing through a room filled by the world, this speck of dust on a dirty window. I’ll rip them from my face and hold them out before her if only to fill my vision solely with her. I won’t! Damn this... attraction. To her I’ll say, “Draw me in, flame, burn my wings and consume me alive.” I can’t.

I hate her. I hate the way she looks at me, like she can see every aspect of the me that is terrible. I hate the way that she knows me. I hate the way she meets every blow with two of her own; she won’t let me lead until she’s bleeding. I hate her most when she’s bleeding. It makes me want to warn her away, tell her, “Stupid girl, don’t bleed for me.” And she can’t control it: whether she bleeds or not. I’m always the one who decides that and she decides the same for me.

“Throw one more damn glass at me and I’ll break your fucking face!”

“Yell at me one more damn time and I’ll break your fucking face!”

Are we fighting again? Shit, I can’t tell anymore. I’m drunk again. It’s a bit of a blur and I want to hold her... want to throw her. Straight off the balcony. We’re always screaming at each other, but whether or not we’re fighting comes down to the words mixed in with actions. I’m yelling, she’s yelling. My knuckles are ravaged, skin torn and hanging in places, jagged flaps propped up on beads of blood that roll down my fingers when I move my hands.

There’s a dead fly in a pool of spilled perfume, the glass bottle little more than shards on the floor. Its wings twitch; it’s dying, not dead, yet. Like a hurricane has rolled through the rooms, I find torn posters beneath my feet along with books thrown from shelves. Glass crunches underfoot as I shift my weight. She’s a storm, like me, but she never wants to destroy me the way I want to destroy her. She stops in the bedroom, sits among torn sheets and clothing, and watches me, distraught. Our reflections are still after we move in the sliding glass doors that lead out onto the balcony littered with cigarette butts and strewn with glass, perhaps it’s the result of the blow she delivered to the back of my head when I picked her up, ready to throw her across the room.

“What do you want me to say?” she asks, breaking the silence.

“You’re mine,” I growl.

_You are young, love, but wiser than me. Lay naked beside me, love, and let me be._

Why do I want it? Why does anyone want to be in love with as many poems and songs and books as there are written showing us all that love is a pile of everything we hate? Why do I endure this agony for her? Why is it that I’ve become so numb with alcohol that when I reach for her I never know if I’ll hit her or caress her until my hand is upon her and it doesn’t matter to me either way? Why does she take it and give it? Why doesn’t she leave? Why do we cling to bright moments like they’re our only moments when we’re in them, but forget them all so quickly the moment one of us raises our voice? How do we kiss each other with these same lips that constantly degrade each other? My mind is always blank when I think of life after her.

I don’t let go of her wrist until she yields with a kiss on her way out of the car. She slams the door behind her and doesn’t look back until someone falls into step with her and I watch them walk side by side while I lean against the door, my cigarette raised halfway to my chapped lips.

“I thought you broke up,” Hux muses, tilting his head to get a good look at my face.

“We’re always doing that.”

Is it that obvious? Is it somehow written across my face in bold, red ink that we’re fighting again, stopping just short of breaking bones for the sake of calling this love? This is a waste of time. She’s a waste of time. She’s stress relief. No, she only makes me angrier and lights a fire in me that urges my hands to her as well as inanimate victims. She’s no victim; she can leave whenever she wants. I fear, though, that I am trapped, sewn messily to her with wire that tears my skin whenever I move.

Across the slowly filling lot, she’s smiling this fake smile as she talks to a group by the entrance. I don’t care, but I notice the way she keeps raising her hand to her cheek, hiding a bruise already hidden beneath her make up. I hope she knows she’s the shitty center of my world and I’m not letting her go. If I let her go, then this love becomes an even bigger waste of time and I’ll rip her heart from her chest with my bare hands before I let her make me feel like a bigger fool. She meets my gaze as she always does: with cold eyes that know me too well, but don’t know me at all.

“You think you’ll marry her one day?” Hux asks, following my gaze.

“Fuck no.”

“Someone will.”

“I’ll put a fucking bullet through their heads. Her lover for proposing and her for accepting.”

“That’s insane.”

“It’s her fucking fault,” I reply, digging through my pockets for my cigarettes.

She wouldn’t do the same. I _know_ that. I feel the truth as it drags its claws down my spine. She doesn’t love me like I love her, but it all evens out. We achieve an equilibrium threatening to tilt and wash itself away with our love, equal on the scales. Where my passion is painted with blood, hers is dipped in honey and sweet on my tongue while she clogs my lungs like cigarette smoke that doesn’t mean to hurt me. And it feels amazing at times, like a taste of heaven. If I tell her tomorrow that I’m going to marry someone else, she’ll probably say it’s fine and congratulate me, even if it tears her apart. That’s her way of loving. She’s wasting my time with the same passion she wastes her own. Two birds with one stone, right?

“I hate her,” I murmur, watching her disappear into the building.

There’s snow melting in my boots, making my socks soggy and uncomfortable. I shiver and stuff my free hand into my pocket, eyes narrowing beneath the wind’s assault. The lot feels too quiet, despite the endless hum of conversation not pertaining to me, and still, despite the groups of people climbing from their cars, adjusting their scarves, rubbing their bare hands together. It’s always in the moment the door closes between us that I think I might miss her should she leave one day, leave me in this snowy city for something great, like the sun on her skin and someone who doesn’t slam her head against coffee tables and then get drunk.

There’s nothing wrong with me, I think, because I’m just a man living my life, rebelling against society by way of nonconformity. I live my life to the fullest; swallow every breath with a greedy mouth because I deserve it. Putting myself first in my head, I can’t find fault in my selfishness because it’s my life and I need only live it for my pleasure. It’s her who’s screwed, following every rule like it’ll strike her down if she doesn’t, a mess of a human ruled by the usual altruism. Well, almost every rule. We’re both going to jail if someone files a complaint. No matter how lacking in flaws I am or how off kilter she is, we’ve got no one else to take us, no one else to want us but us. I hate that, too.

“Why don’t you break up with her?”

“We’re always doing that.”

“Why don’t you let her leave?”

“You think I won’t leave her?”

“What do you think?”

“I want to play this game until it ends.”

Hux laughs, this dry note rife with condescension that makes me wants to send his head flying through the windshield, as he pulls open the door. “That’s it? That’s the only thing keeping you together?”

I hesitate and bite my tongue. No, it’s not, but it’s the main reason. Perhaps, I’m with her because no one else will have me, no one else dares to spare me a glance. I can’t imagine anyone else being naïve enough to offer me their heart, thinking that I won’t do something sadistic. For that, I worship her. There’s an untouchable courage in that, in her sacrificing herself to burn at my hands. She’ll be here, too, always and forever as long as I want her, even if she doesn’t want me, because I have her and I’ve infiltrated her store of affection.

_Is that a smile, love, looking furtively at me from the corner of your beautiful lips?_

I think my mother would be proud of me if she ever met my girlfriend. Am I calling her that again? Girlfriend. The word makes me feel like a pubescent boy who’s never talked to a girl in his life and only wants someone to call his because it’s more of a trend than a genuine aspiration. But she’s my girlfriend all the same, whether I like the word or not. It’s just too soft of a word to describe her, too tender, too normal, too unlike my view of her.

She’s not even trying to help me anymore. Sighing as I collapse on the stairs, she pulls my head up by my hair, tangling her fingers in it and tugging lightly as if coaxing me into moving on my own. Her hand on the rough edge makes the stairs feel like a perfectly fine place to sleep. My mind is a mess, tangled and slow to react, but I know she’s crying the kind of tears that always precede the kind of conversations that leave me to wallow in a thick mixture of self- loathing and guilt.

“I fucking hate you, Kylo.”

“Shut the fuck up.” A pause and then, for good measure, “I love you.”

“This is the issue with you, you emo breadstick...”

We both laugh at that and she runs her fingers absently over my exposed neck, lightly. I catch her hand in mine, never looking at her because I know I can’t or I’ll tear down every wall we’ve been chipping away at so carefully over time and it’ll be too fast and she’ll run. And we’ll probably end up like my parents one day: fine for a few days, ready to kill each other if we’re together too long, but we’ll love each other just the same. Maybe she’ll have my kid, maybe she won’t and there’ll be nothing to keep her anchored to me in this shifting world. That’s too tender a thought to stomach, a stupid thought tainted by delusions of affection. God, I hate her.

“I’ve been thinking,” she begins.

“That’s new...”

“About us. We’re fine sometimes and other times... Sometimes I think you really want to kill me, that you’re putting everything you have into hurting me.”

I wonder about it occasionally, never in the moment. Anger blinds me, coming and going too quickly for me to comprehend. The thought usually crosses my mind in the aftermath, when she’s lying on the floor after I’ve won and I can’t say that I’m pleased because I don’t know what I wanted. I never know if I want to hurt her until I’ve hurt her. I know, though, (when she wins and I’m the beaten one) that she doesn’t want to hurt me because she’s always there in the mornings to clean up blood, to cover bruises with expensive products, to kiss cuts as if I’m a crying child who wants only for his mother’s kiss to rid himself of pain. Maybe I am.

“Are we together because we love each other or are we together because no one else wants us and we don’t want to be alone? It feels like we hate each other, like the only time we’re having a good time is when we’re fighting. I want a normal relationship with a normal person. I don’t want to be with an obsessive, clingy bastard until I die,” she says.

“Do you want to end this?” It’s a stupid question; I know the answer.

“Like one of us packs our shit and leaves and we never talk again?”

“Yeah.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m broke,” she answers, a wry smile tugging at the corners of her lips. “And I know you love me.”

I close my eyes. My heart slows in my chest and freezes. And, I suppose, she doesn’t love me. Not with the same intensity. I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to love like me. Love consumes me and turns me into a rabid beast that will destroy the world for a lover. Maybe that’s the issue: she’s an incompetent lover. No, she loves me the same way I love her even if she won’t admit it. My heart melts bit by bit, thought by thought. Tomorrow I won’t remember this.

“We abuse each other.”

“We love each other,” I counter.

“As if that’s an excuse...” She sighs and adds, “We can’t keep hitting each other.”

“It’s just what we do.”

“If you hit me again, I swear I’m going to leave and never come back.” And there’s something in her tone that tells me that she’s serious. Mixed in with the fact that this is the first time she’s said it bluntly, her words sober me.

There’s a fly somewhere. I hear its incessant buzzing, the soft thwack of its body running repeatedly into a hard surface. We’re like flies, aren’t we: bumping into things with the idiotic hope that the wall will give the next time we run into it. We’ll fall soon, but not before our minds are muddled from the constant collision.

“Kiss me.” My acquiescence.

“Your breath smells.” She kisses me all the same. Even as I nod, I know things won’t change. We’ll be like my parents, alright. All the bad parts of them rolled into a relationship until we get tired of each other and then we’ll leave for a while, miss each other, come back, be kind, and then we’ll hate each other again. Love is a waste of time. This is a waste of time. I know exactly where we’re going, but I close my eyes and pretend the road is foreign. I feel her kisses on my cheek, the tip of my nose, the corner of her mouth, and I wonder if this is what we’ll be: a bit of sweetness drowned out by bitterness. No, she’ll leave me one day when the walls have fallen and she can’t stand to see the monster reflected in her eyes.


End file.
